A few decades before Hollywood started reaping every last bit of arable intellectual property, Martin Scorsese imagined a gritty reboot of Jesus Christ. In the devout Christian’s retelling of the greatest story ever told – adapted, per a title card, from Nikos Kazantzakis’ novel and not the New Testament – star Willem Dafoe dared to play the son of God as a mortal, and a flawed one at that. His feathery-haired Jesus had a temper and an ego, defects of virtue that the holier texts would never allow. He speaks in a combination of scriptures and modern vernacular, an odd combination more pronounced in Harvey Keitel’s curly-headed Bronx Judas. Most scandalizing of all, Jesus has a bit of a libido to him, making graphic onscreen love to his wife Mary Magdalene (Barbara Hershey). At the time, religious groups were up in arms over what they saw as a blithely sacrilegious depiction of the Christ, and Blockbuster Video refused to stock the film.